The AIB Schools 5K Challenge

AIB hosted a fantastic event, the ‘AIB Schools 5k Challenge’, in the beautiful Killarney National Park on Wednesday 6^th May.

There was great weather on the day and over 1,000 students took part. In total, 20 schools were present at the event from Kerry and Cork travelling from Bantry, Ballyvourney, Listowel, Tralee and Killarney.

Through this event, AIB jointly supported with the school principals that “active children are much more productive academically” as well as the overall health benefits of this physical activity. The overall winners on the day were Darragh McElhinney and Caoimhe Harrington, both representing Pobail Scoil Bantry which showed Cork is producing some great athletes.

The 1000 participating students also took the opportunity to raise funds for a new sports facility in St. Brendan’s College, Killarney. This showed that there is the capacity for massive co-operation, not only between schools, but also across counties when there’s a benefit to the broader community in question.

There were individual prizes for the first three boys and girls across the line in both the primary and secondary school categories. There were also prizes for the schools. These consisted of health and wellbeing seminars for teachers, parents and students for the secondary schools and coaching sessions with Colm Cooper and James O Donoghue for the primary schools.

These prizes were awarded based on the number of participanting students from each school and were won by Presentation Listowel and Killarney Community College in the secondary schools category and Lissivigeen Primary and Monastery Killarney in the primary schools category.

There was a large media presence at the event from both local and national press and AIB was represented on the day by Colm Cooper and James O’Donoghue. The event afforded AIB a great opportunity to engage with schools and their surrounding communities, while forging important new relationships.

A big thank you goes to the following individuals for all their hard work in the previous few months and on the dayitself: Brian Looney, Regional Office, Tomas Griffin, Wealth & Deposits Regional Manager, Amy Lynch, Student Officer Killarney, Bobbie O’Dwyer. Central Branch Manager Killarney, Margaret Griffin, RSSM and Sandra O’Sullivan, Wealth & Deposit Manager.